Community Corner
Downey, Other Leaders, to Share Love of Reading on Valentine's Day
The Coronado councilwoman will join Rolling Readers as the literacy group celebrates two decades of work Tuesday by hosting reading events at schools throughout the county.
Love can take many forms, whether it’s for your partner of umpteen years or the beloved family cat who curls up in your lap.
For more than 30 local leaders and celebrities, it will take the shape of a book as they read to children on Valentine’s Day in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Rolling Readers―a non-profit organization that promotes literacy. They will read aloud at 15 San Diego County elementary schools.
Councilwoman Carrie Downey is a volunteer, as are former 10News reporter Hal Clement and current reporter Robert Santos. Poway school board members Linda Vanderveen and Todd Gutschow also will participate.
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Based on the principle that reading aloud promotes imagination and grade-level literacy, Rolling Readers volunteers visit schools in low-income communities every week throughout the academic year.
They also participate in book giveaways, where a child in their Read-Aloud program is given a brand-new book of their very own. Executive Director Susan Fiske-Koehler estimated around half a million books have been donated since the program’s inception in 1991, with 11,500 given to children living in poverty just last year.
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“The reason this is really important is that … there’s only one book for every 300 children in the homes in low-income communities,” she said. “And so it’s the actual book ownership that becomes really important to these kids.”
Jane Hopkins, a 14-year volunteer who reads to four classes at Emerson/Bandini Elementary in San Diego's Southcrest neighborhood, said many of the older children still have the book they were given, and will ask her if she remembers it.
She said visiting the same children each week is what helps the program make a lasting impression. It also makes it fun.
“You get greeted so warmly every time you go,” she said. “… Kids will yell out, ‘Mrs. Hopkins is here! Mrs. Hopkins is here!’ ”
Rolling Readers was formed when founder Robert Condon saw the positive effects of reading out loud to his children. He began visiting homeless shelters, reading to the children there and seeing similar responses.
The reasons for the decline in literary are numerous. In some cases, cultural differences prevent parents from becoming involved at their child’s school, as they believe it would be insulting to the teachers. Other parents are refugees who can’t read in their native language, much less English. Still others are financially unable to take time off from work.
“It’s not because the parents don’t want to be there, it’s because the parents can’t be there,” Fiske-Koehler said.
The drop in the sale of picture books in favor of increasingly popular chapter books doesn’t help either.
Picture books, Fiske-Koehler said, allow for the development of critical thinking in a setting that is comfortable and manageable for the child. In Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, for example, illustrations are able to introduce the word “ultimatum” or the concept of a “neutral party.”
The Rolling Readers program costs $40 per child per year. Last year in San Diego County nearly 5,000 low-income children heard a book read aloud every week by a volunteer.
Some sites include Herbert Ibarra Elementary School in San Diego, Golden Avenue Elementary in Lemon Grove, and Solana Vista in Solana Beach.
Editor's Note: Patch is a sponsor of this event.
